Today is Friday, August 18, 2023; and as of 17 years ago today on Friday, August 18, 2006 at 8:33 in the evening Eastern Daylight Time, The Gate was unofficially launched with this article pertaining to liquids and gels — and what is allowed to be carried aboard an airplane and what is not allowed.
Where have the years gone?!?
Thank You For 17 Years: The State of The Gate 2023
I am proud to report on significant progress. New this year at The Gate With Brian Cohen are the following developments:
- New URL. You might have noticed that earlier this year, thegatewithbriancohen.com is now the official Uniform Resource Locator — or URL — for The Gate With Brian Cohen. With that, my name was added to the official name of this blog.
- New newsletter. As of earlier this month, The Gate With Brian Cohen has a new and improved newsletter which recaps thoughts, experiences, tips, and deals that have been published. The newsletter is generally released every four days. To sign up for the newsletter, please click here. Subscribing to the newsletter will not cost you any money; and you can unsubscribe from it at any time.
- Marketplace now open. Affiliate links of merchants that have partnered with The Gate With Brian Cohen are now available. Affiliate links were added effective as of Sunday, January 1, 2017. If you need a product or service and click on one of those links for a purchase, The Gate With Brian Cohen will receive a small commission. If you do use these links, thank you for your business.
- Old articles have been archived. Hundreds of articles that are now considered outdated, obsolete, and have no useful purpose — such as a sale with an airline or lodging company from years ago — have been archived for fewer results when searching for an article and for better search engine optimization.
- List of the top 100 articles. The list of the top 100 articles in terms of readership since Friday, August 1, 2014 — which is when The Gate returned to BoardingArea — has been updated.
- Even more original photographs that have never been used before. This initiative has increased since last year — especially as more experiences are being published.
Reminders as to what remains with The Gate With Brian Cohen — with additional details in the article from last year — are:
- Original sources for articles. Accessing original sources to as many articles as possible for the most accurate information possible continues to be important, with fewer regurgitated news stories.
- Keeping “click bait” in check. “Click bait” serves no real purpose other than for the “clicks” — and to annoy readers — so headlines that are misleading are kept in check. That is different from catchy headlines, which are designed to increase interest in reading articles and satisfy the reader with information. I refuse to start headlines to articles of The Gate With Brian Cohen with such asinine terms as amirite, bold, crazy, crikey, cringe, grim, gulp, hah, huge, oops, ouch, sad, savage, shame, shameful, silly, snazzy, tasty, ugh, uh oh, unicorn, whoa, woot, wow, Yahtzee!, yeehaw, yikes, yow, yowza, yuck, and other ridiculously useless words, as they are simply irritating. I personally refuse to read articles with those types of headlines.
- Comments section remains open with virtually no moderation. This needs no explanation; and it will continue unchanged for the foreseeable future. Please feel free to post your thoughts on any article at any time.
- Social media. Please visit and follow the official YouTube channel of The Gate With Brian Cohen — as well as both the official Twitter account and the official Facebook account.
Future projects for The Gate With Brian Cohen that are not yet a reality include:
- Audio program. An official audio program for The Gate With Brian Cohen, which will supplement the articles and ideally include interviews.
- More videos. This will eventually be implemented, with me as your host.
- Addition of merchandise to the Marketplace. This is for the sale of items that feature my photography, as one of many possible examples.
Final Boarding Call
Once again, I am asking a simple favor: I want to increase readership and interest in The Gate With Brian Cohen in order to allow me to travel even more and bring you articles of trip reports, reviews, and experiences from around the world. Although subscribing to the free newsletter is one way you can help, I also want to grow readership organically based on the quality of the content of the articles I write. What topics would you like to see me cover in future articles? About what topics should I avoid writing? Where would you like to see me travel next? In addition to the channel on YouTube, should I dabble more in multimedia, such as audio and video reports in addition to written articles? What interests you the most that you rarely or never see at other weblogs? What keeps you coming back as a reader of The Gate With Brian Cohen?
I am hopeful that the first 17 years of The Gate is only the beginning for bigger and better things to come…
…but in the meantime — as I say every year — thank you so much once again for your support. Mere words cannot ever convey my expression of gratitude, as I am grateful to you — more than you will ever know — for without you, there would be no The Gate.
May the remainder of the year 2023 only get better for you from here on in.
The photograph featured at the top of this article is the city of Shanghai in China at night. All photographs ©2005, ©2006, ©2014, and ©2015 by Brian Cohen.
